


And if they get me take this spike to my heart

by Kangoo



Category: The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death Fix, Character Turned Into Vampire, M/M, Non-Canonical Character Undeath, The Death Cure Spoilers, This is Bad, but it is rather gory so be warned, just a quick and dirty fix-it of the death cure because i'm in denial, seriously this isn't meant to be well-written, the rating and warning are here for safety, when in doubt turn someone into a vampire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-24 22:52:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16184870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo
Summary: Newt dies, and doesn't.





	And if they get me take this spike to my heart

**Author's Note:**

> this is so bad i threw it together in three hours it's 4 am and i'm tired but fuck it. newt is a vampire now. i had to write it down before i lost motivation so enjoy i guess
> 
> the idea is basically: what if newt is immune, what if immunes can get the Flare but are the only one to survive it/mutate, what if surviving the Flare without serum turns you into a vampire. or something like that
> 
> title from Vampires Will Never Hurt You. i'm mcr trash and also _hilarious_
> 
> written and published like two minutes apart so no proofreading, at all. enjoy the 3 am writing

He dies with a knife in his heart, cold metal cutting right through fevered flesh.

It’s not instantaneous. Pinful things rarely are. The bite of the blade stops his heart, but his virus-riddled brain hasn’t noticed quite yet — he’s more dead than alive already. So, for one breathless, _weightless_ second the madness lifts from his mind, leaving an odd sort of peace in its wake.

The world stands still for the first time in months as their frantic running — from WCKD, from the infection, for Minho — is abruptly jerked to a stop. What a shame that he still can’t catch his breath. A stab wound in the chest will do that to you.

(They say your life flashes before your eyes when you die, but he remembers nothing. Days and weeks and months in the Scorch, blurred in his memory by the Flare, and nothing else. What a _waste_.)

He wants to reach out, reach up, brush the blood off Thomas’ face and tell him everything will be alright — but he never could lie to him and his veins are filled with lead, burning-cold and poisonous, weighing him down, anchoring him to the ground. He feels heavy, so heavy, and with the way he chokes on the fluids in his lungs he think that maybe he’s drowning.

He might be. What will kill him first? The blood in his throat or the knife in his heart?

(Thomas is crying, he thinks. His lips are moving but he can’t hear a sound, all lost under the overwhelming thumping of his own heart. Hasn’t it stopped yet?)

He opens his mouth and all that comes out is a wet gurgle, blood and god knows what else dripping down his chin, and as he realizes that’s it — that’s how he dies, waterlogged and choking on words — the madness slams back into him like a tidal wave, dragging him under in a great flood of darkness.

He dies with a knife in his heart and Thomas’ hands against his chest, warm against the creeping cold.

 

-

 

Here’s what they don’t know: the Flare is a virus. By nature, it mutates.

Here’s what they don’t know: the Flare is a fever, and you can only wait and see which one burns out first, your mind or the virus.

Here’s what they don’t know: it’s not necessarily about _immunity_ — it’s about resilience.

Here’s what they don’t know: immune or not, they would all rather take a bullet to the head or a knife to the chest than go through the Changing. It tends to skew results.

Here’s what they don’t know: they missed his heart.

 

-

 

He wakes up to a city in ruins.

It is a slow awakening, where he drifts in and out of consciousness in a feverish haze. It’s impossible to tell day from night through the smoke choking up the sky and in his impaired state, time slips through his fingers like a fistful of sand. Hours, days — it’s impossible to tell how long he lays there, breathing shallowly through the sharp pain in his side.

Slowly, painstakingly, he lifts his hand and wraps numb fingers around the handle of the knife. Takes a shallow breath through clenched teeth, and pulls. The blade catches on his flesh, drags against one of his ribs before he manages to wrench it free. His hand falls back to the ground, the knife clattering to the ground as he gasps in pain. The air tastes like ashes and dust.

It’s hard to believe he’s awake enough to taste anything.

Newt is alive. He caught the Flare and stabbed himself in the chest, and he’s _alive_.

 

-

 

It takes him hours to disperse the fog in his brain enough to _think_ , which he immediately regrets.

_I’m dead- I’m alive- I survived- Did they? Do they know? Did they leave me being? I died. Did they?_

The same thoughts run in circles in his brain, fear for his friends and bitter regret that he’s been left behind and hope that, without him, they managed to get away. An incomprehensible mix of emotions that twist his stomach in knots until the pain of his — still bleeding — stab wound clears it from his mind for just a moment, long enough to realize he might still bleed out right there. It’s a miracle he hasn’t yet.

Standing up takes him — too long. An eternity, gone in the blink of an eye. He thinks he falls unconscious again, but it’s hard to tell. Finally, he manages to stagger to his feet, lurching forward at the vertigo that takes him as soon as he is upright. But his life is nothing if not a succession of miracles and he keeps his balance, if barely.

He feels sluggish, slow, _heavy_ , but most importantly he feels exhausted, drained of everything. Blood, mostly, but energy too. And he is _famished_.

 

-

 

He should know, by now, that miracles come at a price. One he might not be so keen to pay.

Stumbling through what’s left of the streets of the Last City, he tries to make sense of the situation — he has, by all mean, come back from the dead. But how? And if he could do it, however he did it, what does it mean of the people they lost before? Could it have happened to Chuck? To _Alby_?

Thinking about the _how_ makes his brain hurts, but the _what if_ s are worse.

But soon enough he’s not thinking _at all._

 

It’s not the first corpse he walks past. Most are burned to a crisp or already rotting, some already a week old at the least. He doesn’t spare them more than a cursory glance, checking that they aren’t Cranks. So he doesn’t why this one is different — maybe it’s because it’s fresher, only dead for a day or two, still warm, almost. Maybe it’s the way it died, a bullet in the head rather than torn to shred by an explosion.

But Newt sees it, _smells_ it, and everything goes—

_red_.

Then, as if in a blink, he goes from barely standing in the street to crouching next to the corpse, the last moments a few hazy snapshots of blood and teeth and all-consuming hunger. He falls back, blinking hard, panting — it feels like losing himself to the Flare, a sudden hole in his memory like he jumped forward in time to a body that isn’t quite his own.

His mouth tastes like salt and copper, and his chin is sticky with blood.

 

Maybe he has a panic attack.

Alright, he definitely has a panic attack.

He’s out in the open in a street full of corpses, in a city torn by civil ward, but it doesn’t matter. He curls up far from the body and cries, great, gasping sobs ripping through his body. He thought he survived the Flare — he thought maybe there was a mistake and he truly was immune — thought it was a miracle.

What an idiot. As if the Universe had ever been so kind. He might think he still has his mind, but he’s a monster — all it took is a second for him to turn into a blood-drinking beast, after all.

The taste linger at the back of his throat. He gags, but his body refuses to throw it up, and it settles uneasily in his stomach. With it, the hunger quiets, the burning thirst abides, and he can only curl up tighter, cry harder, wishing the knife hadn’t missed.

The wound in his side closes.

 

The sky darkens and he drags himself to a dark corner, exhausted and barely awake through the headache from crying most of the afternoon away.

There’s no one around. The city is eerily quiet — there aren’t even Cranks to fill the empty space.

There’s just him, and the blood on his tongue.

But at least he’s alone, which means he is safe, or others are safe from him, whichever it is now. He sits against a crumbled wall, pops up the collar of his jacket — it’s covered in blood but it’s better than freezing his ass off at the moment — and slips into an uneasy sleep.

 

He starts to count the days after that, although he spends most of them asleep. He finds it easier to keep his eyes open later in the evening, for some reason — his memory conjures the sight of Cranks gathering in the darkest corners of the Scorch and he growls under his breath.

Can’t say he’s any better than them now.

Still, he counts the days, gets his shit together, and tries to think of his next move.

It takes him a week to understand the unknown hunger in his guts. It’s more of a thirst, really, one that he never fully satisfies, and it’s even longer than that before it becomes bad enough that it consumes him again. This time he wakes up a mile from his temporary hide-out, blood all over his face as he is crouched above another corpse. It’s not fresh, thank god, and the bullet riddling it’s body tell him they were another victim of the war against WCKD, not one of his own.

But it could have been.

That’s when he realizes he can’t stop it — whatever _it_ is, it won’t let him starves himself to death, and he can’t risk it taking control when there are… people around.

So when it starts to become unbearable, he takes to looking for fresh bodies, following the distant sound of commotions or gunfights and dragging the corpses to his hide-out. They make for poor company and even poorer decor, but it beats waking up on the other side of the ruined city like he drank too much of Gally’s moonshine — the aftertaste is the same, but at least he wakes up somewhere he recognizes.

Weeks pass and it becomes clear that he is changing. His teeth grow. His canines hurt like a bitch and he constantly finds himself gnawing on anything he can, from the collar of his jacket to a strip of leather he found in his pocket. His eyesight sharpens until he can see almost as good as day in pitch darkness, although bright light becomes painfully blinding — luckily there isn’t much of that in the city, with the smoke still obscuring the sky more often than not.

(He still limps. What a shitty Changing. Can’t even get rid of _that_.)

The more he changes, the more he knows he can’t stay in the city forever. He dredges up the courage to — bite. It’s even harder than he thought to bring himself to put his teeth into something that is both human (morally disturbing) and dead (objectively disgusting). But he’s hungry, and god knows what would happen if he were to go… _feral_ in the Scorch. So he groans, and gags, and bites into the throat of a woman he found half-burned in a car.

He feels numb to the death and misery of this place. The streets run red with blood, even here, far from the center of the violence, and too much of it is his own. He just wants to leave this whole place behind.

So he feeds, and hopes his sleep going forward will be as dreamless as it’s been these past few weeks. He doesn’t dare imagine the nightmares he would get if he took but a second to think about what is happening to him.

 

-

 

Another miracle is the still-functioning car he finds on the outskirt of the city. He doesn’t think about it, just jumps behind the wheel and starts the ignition. All he has are the clothes on his back and the knife strapped to his thigh, cleaned at much as it could be of his own blood. He doesn’t have food or water, and he doesn’t care. Either he starves or he survives, and at this point he doesn’t know which one he’d prefer.

Once again he doesn’t think about it. Doesn’t think about how much he’d rather have Thomas and Minho there — they would know what to do. They would be able to help, or to put an end to his misery, whichever one they’d deem best.

But he doesn’t think about it, and floors the accelerator.

He doesn’t think about anything.

 

He has nowhere to go, so he sets course for the only place he knows; their home, for the last six months. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if they’re not there anymore, or worse, if they are. He doesn’t want them to see him like this, doesn’t want to risk them, but he’s scared and alone and this place is his only lead at the moment.

He rides through the Crank-infested tunnel at break-neck speed, somehow managing to keep his ride upright and functioning as he drives into the mindless undead that throws themselves under his wheels.

When he gets there, the camp is empty — or so he thinks.

By then he can’t be bothered to think about anything but the hunger gnawing at his stomach, a painful yet welcome reprieve from the fears and doubts plaguing his mind.

Being alone in the Scorch is the best way to go insane, but he feels like that ship has sailed already, maybe with the literal ship to the Safe Haven, the one that is no longer anchored close to camp.

It means enough lived that they could leave. This is good.

It means they left him behind. He has more mixed feelings about this one — irrational betrayal and relief, mostly.

Although it is soon evident that the camp isn’t as abandoned as he thought.

Of course people moved into the place they deserted — it’s the perfect hide-out, after all they made it this way.

And a part of him can’t even bring itself to be mad when the lone man threatens him with a shotgun. He must be careful to have survived alone this long, and wariness of strangers is the first thing you learn in the Scorch. It’s logical. It’s a misunderstanding.

It is unfortunate that he is hungry.

 

Newt can’t even bring himself to feel guilt when he leans back from his first kill — his first _prey_ , because he has killed before, of course he has. Maybe that’s why all he feels when he ‘wakes up’ with fresh-warm blood in his mouth is a deep sadness — a little bit for the man he just killed, as much an innocent as anyone can be in the Scorch, and a lot for himself, becoming even more of a monster each day.

At least he’s not hungry anymore. Actually, for maybe the first time since he’s woken up, he’s — full, almost uncomfortably so.

The wonders a full meal does.

And, unbothered by hunger, he is finally able to put aside the guilt, the pain, the fear, the terrible emotions warring in his brain, a chorus of _Thomas_ and _you’d be better off dead_ in equal measure. He pushes them as far from the forefront of his mind as he can, and he gets planning.

He has a compass in his pocket, worse for wear but still working. All he needs now is a raft.

 

It takes him weeks to get together something that could, with some exaggeration, be called sea-worthy. By then he is hungry, of course, but less so than he expected from going so long without food.

Fresh is the way to go, apparently.

But there is no doubt that, if he gets to where he wants to be, he will be starving, and that is not something he can allow. All he can do is hunt.

There are few animals left in the Scorch — people far outnumber them. But there are still fish, and it is worth a try to see if he can stomach those better than the rations he tried back in the city and immediately threw up.

As it turns out fish blood is absolutely disgusting, but enough of it fills him enough that he feels less likely to snack on the first person he sees.

The hunger itches, but doesn’t burn, as Newt sits on the glorified raft he calls a boat and sets sail for the general direction of the Safe Haven.

He’s heard Vince talk about it often enough that he can probably find it. Maybe. Or he’ll drown at sea, and that will be the end of that.

Either way, it will fix at least some of his problems.

 

-

 

Thomas spends so much time gazing off at the horizon, deep in thoughts and regrets, it’s no wonder he’s the first to see it — see _him_.

“Boat incoming!” He yells on his way down the rift, making others jump out of his path as he runs past them. He snatches a pair of binoculars out of Minho’s hands and then wordlessly hands them back to him, eyes never leaving the raft carried by the waves.

There’s a figure collapsed on it, with dirty blond hair and clothes covered in blood.

“A survivor?” Minho asks, surprised.

“Yeah, but how did they find us?” Gally says, lowering his own binoculars.

They both turn to Thomas, who’s still silent. Then, without a warning, he takes off toward the shore, jumping into the water and wading toward the raft.

Typical.

By the time they join him he has reached the unconscious stranger and he is frozen in place next to them, up to his waist in water.

“Are they alive?”

He shakes his head, but not in a negation — more like he’s trying to clear his head of thoughts, or to wake up from a dream.

Thee afternoon is quiet, with barely any wind, and it’s only because of that that they can hear him when he whispers, aghast, in lieu of answer, “It’s _Newt_.”

 

-

 

Newt wakes up to darkness and hunger. It’s not a surprise: that’s how his life has been for more than a month, now. What is a surprise is that he is motionless — even when he moves slightly, as a test, the surface on which he rests doesn’t budge.

As he reached land, finally?

Clenching his teeth to ward off the thirst, he opens his eyes and stares up, at the ceiling above his head.

Fuck, he did it.

_He did it_.

The realization hits him like a train and he jerks up. His abrupt movement disturbs the weight resting on his legs, and it’s only then that he notices it — just in time to see Thomas sits up too, groaning.

“What-” He blinks his eyes open, and they widen when he notices Newt awake. “Newt!”

He seems at a loss for words, as if there is too much to say and he doesn’t know which question to start with. Newt can guess a few — _how did you survive, are you immune, how did you find us_.

He doesn’t wait for Thomas to get his shit together.

“Thomas,” he breathes out, relief washing over him. The fear and the guilt are briefly pushed aside, even though he feels his teeth catching on his lower lips, something he still can’t avoid despite spending months with them in his mouth. “Tommy,” he says, trying to express the chaos of his emotions in a single word.

Thomas opens his mouth again, looking both elated and halfway to a nervous breakdown.

And Newt thinks— _I almost lost you. Never again_.

Questions can wait. This cannot.

Thomas is leaning forward already, so Newt doesn’t bother moving. He takes him by the collar of his shirt and drags him forward, crashing their mouths together. By some miracle — another in a long list — he manages to kiss him without cutting him with his teeth, for which he’s grateful.

He leans back an inch, just enough to breath, and grins at the shocked look on Thomas’ face. “ _Tommy_ ,” he repeats, kind of like a prayer. “You can’t imagine how long I’ve been meaning to do that.”

“Newt-” Thomas frowns but doesn’t move, even resting his hands on Newt’s shoulders to balance himself. “I- _How_? You died in my arms, you stopped breathing, how-”

Newt rests one of his hands on Thomas’ neck and breathes out slowly as the rest of the tension leaves his body. _Finally_ , he thinks.

It took him long enough, but he can finally stop running and catch his breath.

“It’s a long story,” he says, smiling softly. At Thomas’ obvious bewilderment, it grows, revealing all his teeth, and he enjoys the growing confusion in his eyes more than he maybe should. “And not a happy one, I’m afraid.”

“Shuck, Newt,” he says, kind of helplessly. “You’re here. That’s as happy as it gets.”

**Author's Note:**

> that's barely the surface of all that could happen with a Vampire!Newt and i am NOT writing the clusterfuck that would follow because fuck it, it's 4 am and my eyes are currently sandpaper. 
> 
> hope you enjoyed leave a comment about how much of a mess this is on your way out, love you, bye


End file.
